Rural India has 17% more homes with TVs than cities

The survey also shows an 18% jump in TV penetration - from 54% previously to 64%

Television rating agency Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) has updated and aligned its TV universe in line with changes in demographics, TV ownership and connection type, and language preference.

The Council on Thursday released its weekly viewership data (for February 18 -24) on the basis of a revised Universe Estimate (UE), which is based on the results of Broadcast India (BI) Survey. 

According to BI-2016 survey, which was undertaken to ascertain the TV universe and viewing habits in India, the number of TV homes in the country has gone up by 19 per cent to 183 million from 154 million. While the urban-rural split of TV homes was 50:50 earlier, rural India has 17 per cent more TV homes now. Urban India currently has 84 million TV households, while TV-owning homes in rural India stand at 99 million, it said.  The survey also shows an 18 per cent jump in TV penetration — from 54 per cent previously to 64 per cent. The total TV viewing universe in terms of viewers also saw a 16 per cent jump; India today has 780 million TV- viewing individuals.  As a result of this update in the TV universe, the latest ratings have seen a significant jump in impressions (viewership), especially for niche genres like infotainment and music and youth. 

BARC India explained that the increase in the said genres can be attributed to robust increase in average time spent (ATS), increase in total TV homes and increase in number of individuals in TV-owning homes.

Another genre that has seen a robust increase in viewership is South Indian channel genre. “While every state has seen a tremendous growth in TV penetration since the last IRS 2013 (Indian Readership Survey), Kerala and Tamil Nadu had already reached TV penetration saturation and though the growth when compared to other states may look smaller, but it is significant keeping in mind the TV penetration situation in the two states,” explained BARC.  “BI-2016 is one of the biggest surveys done in the country so far. The TV universe in India is ever growing and changing and so is the profile and choice of a TV viewer. 

The last survey done was in 2013 and the last Census was in 2011. The consumer and viewer landscape is changing rapidly - with electrification, prosperity, changing modes of signal and digitisation. We wanted to reflect this change in viewership numbers,” Partho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC India, in a statement. 

“This will help our subscribers and the ecosystem align their strategies for better targeting. The new reality is TV viewership is rapidly growing and how,” he added.

The trends are in line with fragmentation of family sizes (leading to lower average family sizes) and rising economic growth and rising prosperity.

 It also shows that India has more nuclear families without elders than ever before, and it is also the dominant family group among TV- owning homes. 

While the composition of joint families in the universe has come down from 26 per cent to 22 per cent, nuclear families with elders have grown from 53 per cent to 58 per cent.

Fieldwork for the survey was carried out from November 2015 to February 2016, and covered 3,00,000 homes across 590 districts, comprising about 4,300 towns and villages. All one lakh+ towns were covered, while towns below one lakh were selected by a probability proportional to size (PPS) method.